Abortion row: How women always suffer

What’s common between Savita Halappanavar and Purvi Patel? They are both victims of the debate on reproductive choice versus life, in which unfortunately the woman is always on the losing side.

Recently, Purvi Patel an Indian American was indicted in the Indiana courts for having aborted her fetus and for having caused the death of a dependent child. Savita Halappanavar died in 2012 in Ireland because the doctors refused to abort her dead fetus in order to save her life.

Debates

The interconnections between the two cases cannot be ignored. Both the women signify larger debates on reproductive rights. Purvi Patel was the first to be sentenced to 41 years in prison on March 30 by an Indiana court for aborting the fetus and then dumping it in a trash can. Purvi was culpable of the crime of feticide and neglect of a dependent — both strangely juxtaposed together in her "heinous" act of aborting and dumping the fetus. Savita, died because the doctors in Ireland refused to remove the fetus that had miscarried 17 weeks into her pregnancy — the resulting septicaemia was enough to take her life. The Irish followed the dictates of the Catholic Church in refusing to remove the dead fetus, while the American state "punished" Purvi for having aborted her child. Strangely, both Purvi and Savita were "punished" for having made a choice.

How is the life of a woman measured in contemporary global medical discourse and law? Just as it was before — through her body, she remains the vessel/carrier and is accordingly categorised in laws that identify her as a receptacle with no rights. The Purvi Patel case has become enmeshed in the "battle" between pro-choice and pro-life lobbies fighting for the right to abortion and against it, respectively. Also identified as a debate between feminists and conservative lobbies who position the right of the fetus over that of the living woman, sexual and reproductive rights have often been measured opposite this battle line — in the process unable to secure the rights of women more positively.

But beyond the pro-life: Pro-choice lobbies are questions regarding the racial and ethnic mapping of the woman’s reproductive body in global political processes. Thus, Purvi’s punishment is strangely mixed up in the ethnic politics of America where traditionally black and hispanic women’s fertility has always been controlled. Identified as "hyperfertile", the state and society has classified women belonging to ethnic and racial minorities as sexually promiscuous and requiring control. Family planning policies are a legacy of these stereotypes that have always targeted women in the developing world rather than women in the developed world. Anthropologist Michelle Murphy investigates the role American feminists played in the 1960s to popularise birth control mechanisms in the Third World such as India and Bangladesh by helping international funding bodies to mass produce and distribute contraceptives and other forms of birth control.

Practices

The impact of such practices is felt even today: As seen in the death of 15 tribal women in sterilisation/family planning camps in Chattisgarh in 2015. Adivasi women continue to be identified in political rhetoric as women who are "too" fertile and whose numbers need to be curbed.

Are women positioned in terms of fertility control and reproductive choice? Academics Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp refer to such practices as "stratified reproduction" wherein women from the Global North realise their reproductive choices by depriving women from other ethnic, racial minorities and from the Global South — from exercising their choice.

Punishment

However, the notion of choice itself is chequered. For all women their bodies do not belong to them. Their reproductive choice or the lack of it is enmeshed with that of the family and society. The inability to reproduce leads women to use the services of other women to have their children through surrogacy, and the ability to have children subjects women to state control or to the use of their bodies for egg donation and commercial surrogacy.

Across the world, women are punished for seeking to enact their reproductive choice — whether through unsafe family planning measures or through invasive technologies that aim to make women fertile. Savita Halappanavar is "punished" for seeking to live in spite of an already dead fetus. Purvi Patel is punished for making a reproductive choice. And many women in India are punished through the termination of their female fetus. But within such a discourse the costs of living are heavily against the women from the developing world. The reality of the abortion debates rests on the backs of women who are poor, marginalised and minorities across the world.